How do you calculate cycling pace?

Average speed is the distance divided by the time. Pace is the reverse, the time taken per unit of distance. For a 40 km ride in 1 hour 30 minutes, the speed is 40 / 1.5 = 26.67 km/h, and the pace is 90 minutes / 40 km = 2.25 minutes per km, which is 2 minutes 15 seconds per km.

Is cycling measured in speed or pace?

Cyclists usually talk in speed, kilometres or miles per hour, rather than pace, because riders cover ground quickly and speed is easier to read on a bike computer. Runners tend to use pace, minutes per km. This calculator gives you both so you can compare rides or line a ride up against a run or swim.

What is a good average cycling speed?

A casual rider on flat ground averages around 15 to 20 km/h, a fit recreational cyclist 20 to 28 km/h, and a strong club rider 28 to 35 km/h on the flat. Hills, wind, traffic and stops all pull the average down, so a ride with climbing will show a slower average than the same distance on the flat.

Bike Pace Calculator

This bike pace calculator turns a ride distance and the time it took into your average speed and pace, so you can see exactly how quick a ride was and compare it with your other efforts. Enter how far you rode in kilometres and how long you were moving in hours, minutes and seconds, and the calculator returns your average speed in both kilometres per hour and miles per hour, along with your pace expressed as minutes and seconds per kilometre and per mile. Speed and pace are two ways of describing the same thing: speed is distance over time, the number that shows on a bike computer, while pace is time over distance, the way runners and swimmers usually think. Cyclists tend to use speed because they cover ground fast, but having the pace as well makes it easy to line a ride up against a run or a swim, or to work out how long a planned route will take at a chosen pace. The average you see here is the overall figure across the whole ride, so anything that slows you down, climbing, headwinds, traffic lights or a coffee stop with the clock running, pulls it below the speed you hold on the flat. Use it to review a training ride, to pace an event, or to estimate a finish time for a route you are planning.

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Distance

Hours

Minutes

min

Seconds

26.67 km/h

average speed for the ride

Pace per km2:15

Speed16.57 mph

Pace per mile3:37

A 40 km ride in 1:30:00 is an average speed of 26.67 km/h, a pace of 2:15 per km.

Pace is shown as minutes and seconds per unit distance. This is a moving average across the whole ride, so stops and slow sections are included.

How it works

The total time is converted to hours by adding the hours, the minutes divided by 60, and the seconds divided by 3600. Average speed is the distance divided by that time in hours, giving kilometres per hour, and dividing by 1.609344 converts it to miles per hour. Pace is the inverse: the total time in minutes divided by the distance gives minutes per kilometre, and dividing the minutes by the distance in miles gives minutes per mile. The decimal minutes are then split into whole minutes and seconds for a readable pace.

Worked example

You ride 40 km in 1 hour 30 minutes. That is 1.5 hours, so your average speed is 40 / 1.5 = 26.67 km/h, which is 26.67 / 1.609344 = 16.57 mph. For pace, 1 hour 30 minutes is 90 minutes, so your pace is 90 / 40 = 2.25 minutes per km, which is 2 minutes and 15 seconds per km. In miles, 40 km is 24.85 miles, so the pace is 90 / 24.85 = 3.62 minutes per mile, which is 3 minutes and 37 seconds per mile. Shave five minutes off the same distance and the average lifts to about 28.24 km/h.

Related calculators

Bike Cadence and Speed Calculator: speed from cadence and gear.
Speed Calculator: average speed from distance and time.
Running Pace Calculator: pace, time and distance for running.
Swimming Pace Calculator: pace per 100 m.
Bike Gear Calculator: gear inches and development.

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